NEW DELHI: Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra on Tuesday made a strong case for urgent removal of constitutional illiteracy from India and warned against any tinkering with the provisions of the Constitution, which, he said, had served the nation well for over 75 years.
Delivering the inaugural lecture in a new series “The working of the Indian Constitution: Stories and scholarship” at the India International Centre (IIC), Vohra said it would “instead be beneficial for us to better understand the visionary perspectives and provisions of the Constitution and take every required step to secure closer adherence to its prescriptions”.
“A very high risk is involved in any mindless tinkering with any of the provisions of the Constitution of India that have kept us on track for seven and a half decades,” the former Governor cautioned. Vohra argued that consistent development of a country with a vast population as India’s would depend on sustained delivery of good governance. “For the achievement of this objective, it would be essential that the governance system steers close to the goals contained in our exhaustive Constitution, which we are sometimes in a great rush to discard and modify,” said the former IIC president.
He said adherence to the commands of the Constitution, “except during the Emergency, had kept India together and moving forward”. Vohra lamented the lack of the common man’s exposure to the vision of the Constitution and noted, “This is an unfortunate situation because we are a very large country. It would be immensely beneficial for our present and future if a high percentage of our citizenry was meaningfully aware of provisions of the Constitution.” The former Governor advocated serialising of the Constitution on TV, on the lines of the acclaimed ‘Mahabharata’ series.
He termed as “unfounded” the view that knowledge of the Constitution was the preserve only of lawyers and judges. “Constitutional illiteracy must be removed and all people in the polity must adhere to the constitutional provisions not merely by taking an oath which goes into the file, but also by ensuring constitutional governance,” Vohra said. The former Governor, while listing India’s advancements across the health, economy, food security and diplomacy sectors, said the country still had a very long way to go in beating the challenges of nation-building.
“We need to introduce urgent reforms primarily in the areas of national security, elections, empowerment of women and anti-corruption. Mafia syndicates running with the patronage of the political class must be exterminated at the earliest,” Vohra said, adding he saw no proximate possibility of meaningful reforms unless there was national consensus among political parties.
He noted national problems could be solved by first acknowledging them and then finding a consensus to solve them. The event was presided over by IIC president Shyam Saran. At the conclusion, former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi quipped, “The Constitution of India was drafted by the honest for the innocent.”